Don't Let It Go To Your Head

So what's my beef with Physics? Even though I only have one side that I can technically get out of, maybe I broke the laws of Physics and was able to get up on the wrong side of the bed? No. Ooh ooh, maybe I really shattered those rules, defied gravity and floated around my apartment like a helium balloon! Nope. It was all about the financial crisis. Financial crisis? Yes, good people. Let's walk and chat a bit.

So, it is generally assumed that the financial bigwigs of this world are economists. Turns out those assumptions became more and more wrong as we entered the late nineties and early noughts. More and more physicists were leaving rocket science to become financial wizards (perhaps being a wizard is cooler than being a scientist, even if you are working with rockets). Turns out Physicists could harness the power of quarks and anti-matter to create mind-boggling formulae that made you money, no matter who you were. Formulae were created that made money even if a person didn't have a job or assets. Heck, things worked even for people who had a proven history of unpaid bills in their past. Backing these formulae were screeds of legalese, books bigger than the bible, taking all responsibility of any failure away from the financial institutions.

These physicists were locked away in rooms probably full of paper and super-computers, where they could work on their massively complicated work. Out in the world were the sales people, selling-selling-selling and answering any questions of those who were taking breaks between counting their mountains of money to actually ask how this could be. Maybe they would refer you to the bigger-than-the-bible volumes or they would mutter: " Not sure how it works. When I try to think about it, it makes so little sense that it makes my head hurts. But it's working, look at that mountain of money behind you. Why give yourself a headache when you can have a party?"

So, I was listening to this talk about these amazing formulae that very few could understand and I thought, what happened to logic? What happened to reason? What happened to proof? How could you run with Quarks and Antimatter when you had no idea what they were? You took beautiful math and pure physics and thought this could apply to people? There is a big rule in economics, the rule that means that you can have a theory for every economist on the planet, and that rule is that human behaviour can throw all logic asunder. For example, you can tell a dude that he can earn 10% interest on his money which will be safe in a high security lockbox that only he can access and he will go ahead and stuff his money in his mattress... in his straw hut... that he built next to a blazing furnace because he "don't trust those bastids with my money."

Oh, but wait. Hold it right there. See what happened? These formulae took mountains of money (matter) and got it together with these bigger-than-the-bible documents (antimatter) and we ended up with nothing. They proved what made me walk out of the Physics class when I was 16. The mind boggles; perhaps in this crisis I shall find the proof of quarks - up, down and sideways! Is it too late to start to believe? Can I sign up for the new religion? Or is it to late for me and physics. Has Physics abiit, excessit, evasit, erupit?